


Diplomatic Cake

by ncruuk



Series: Cake [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 21:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncruuk/pseuds/ncruuk
Summary: It was hard to know whether the Field Containment Team were more concerned about the pastries or the plutonium.[sequel to 'Curious Cake']





	Diplomatic Cake

"Did I just pass..."  Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Groenwald found her next words were stuck in her throat, but fortunately Osgood was used to people only being able to start sentences.

 

"The technicians from the Field Containment Team? Yes."  Changing her mind at the last second, Osgood didn't bite into her apple but instead began to polish it on the sleeve of her jumper.

 

"Oh."  Tabby had been at the Tower now long enough to know that the next question was obvious, but not always one she wanted to know the answer to.  Having always considered polishing apples on clothes to be a behavioural affectation rather than something that was useful, she was now equally curious, and certainly more comfortable with the answer, about why Osgood was polishing her apple.  However, before she could say anything, Rosie arrived, looking even more chaotic than usual, which wasn't something Tabby had thought possible.

 

"What were the..."  Before she could finish her question, the haphazard stack of meeting papers she was trying to balance on top of a cake tin and underneath what looked like a small shrub, slipped, with half of them landing on the table and the rest floating gently to the floor.  "Bugger...hold this, but don't touch the stems!" she instructed, thrusting the pot plant at Osgood while Tabby found herself instinctively accepting the cake tin that was suddenly pushed against her middle. Before either Osgood or Tabby could say anything, Dr Ethel ‘Rosie’ Onurosie was down on her hands and knees and disappearing under the table to retrieve her scattered meeting papers.

 

"What's this?" asked Tabby, watching with hopefully concealed amusement at Osgood's automatic acceptance of the pot plant which she held at arm's length with her left hand while she put her apple down on the table, then took hold of the pot with both hands.  If the plant had special carrying instructions, she wasn't going to take any chances with an innocent looking cake tin. "Do we need the containment team back here?"

 

"Cake!" declared Rosie, her voice slightly muffled by the table she was currently under...  "Buggeration!" ...that she had forgotten she was under until she found it again with the back of her head.

 

"They wouldn't be interested in it," said Osgood quietly, still studying the plant as she waited for everyone else to arrive, deciding from the continued muttering from under the table and other shuffling noises that Rosie was still conscious, which meant that either the wood of the tabletop had statistically improbable levels of acoustic resonance or Rosie’s skull had an equally impressively improbable hardness.

 

"Not explosive enough?" asked Tabby, making a mental note to never invite her UNIT colleagues round for dinner as her cooking probably met some hazardous waste criteria in one galaxy or another.

 

"Anaphylaxis."  Osgood looked up from the plant to focus on Tabby.  "Milk and wheat."

 

"Oh."  Tabby considered the cake tin afresh, not having thought of cake as a potential deadly weapon before.  "But that wasn't why..."

 

"They better not have been!" declared Rosie, suddenly appearing from under the table and putting the disorderly heap of papers down on the table top with one hand while she rubbed the back of her head with the other.  "I've only blown up two kitchens in my time."

 

"Two?" Tabby hoped Rosie hadn't noticed her voice was more of a squeak, knowing Osgood would have noticed but, being Osgood, would be kind enough to not mention it.  Tabby didn’t think she’d ever known someone who’d blown up a kitchen, nevermind more than one kitchen.

 

"Two whats?"  asked Fran, arriving with Kate.

 

"Kitchens Rosie blew up," said Osgood, looking at Rosie thoughtfully as she tried to calculate the explosive force needed to destroy a moderate sized domestic kitchen.

 

"Excluding mine, Freddie's and the Departmental one she means..."  Kate put her own stack of papers down in front of the chair she usually sat in and looked at her old friend, one-time PhD supervisor and current Senior Biologist with amused affection.  "...why have you given Osgood an Oleander bush?" 

 

"I was picking up my papers."  Rosie reached across and took the pot back.  "And it's not just an Oleander bush, it's one of Tronkie's Oleander bushes that he dropped off."  Rosie held the pot out for Kate to take, knowing she'd be interested which was why she'd brought it to the meeting in the first place.  "With the grafts he promised us."

 

“That’s why you said to not touch the stems?” Osgood went to wash her hands in the sink in the corner (the advantage of the meeting rooms in the science divisions), her kitchen destruction calculations inconclusive.

 

“Yes.”

 

“It’s also poisonous…” pointed out Kate mildly, though she knew Osgood wasn’t in the habit of biting off mouthfuls of random vegetation, meaning the risk was minimal.

 

“That too. There’s a few on that bush.”

 

"Impressive.  Do you know which ones these are?" asked Kate, her keen gardener's eye making her think she could see four grafts on the little bush, with each one looking different.

 

"Probably the toxic ones - he also had olive trees that he was quite excited about so I'm hoping they're the edibles."  Tronkie was currently helping Rosie and her team hybridise some carefully selected plants from the Roqurting Botanical Institute so that Earth could have some sustainable, alien species compatible, food crops.  If successful, this would enable Earth to be reclassified as an agricultural producer world and make it harder for 43 species to invade and prevent a further 17 from being able to apply for planetary destruction.  It had been, as General Bambera so eloquently put it, the first time a (heavily secured and classified) greenhouse became the nuclear deterrent. "He said he'd talk me through them when he got back." Finally settled from her rather chaotic arrival, Rosie took the plant back from Kate and put it on the table at the side of the room before making use of the sink in the corner and thoroughly washing her hands now Osgood had finished.  "When is he back?"

 

"Tonight, it's just a quick visit for tea..." Kate followed Rosie over to the sink, also wanting to wash her hands before she ate some cake.

 

"Was he happy to take the plutonium?"  Osgood frowned, not happy with how she'd phrased her question. "I mean, will Mike and Millie be happy with him taking the plutonium?"  Tronkie, Osgood knew, like all Roqurting, were unaffected by alpha radiation and had a rather more laid back approach to the storage and handling of radioactive isotopes than humans were accustomed to, nevermind those like Mike and Millie who had made a career out of the careful and safe handling of the planet's most lethal and destructive substances.

 

"No, which is why I've loaned him Maria Walsh - she's taking the Plutonium and custard tarts.  She also promised to take some pictures for us."

 

"Plutonium custard tarts?"  Rosie looked accusingly at Kate.  "And you say I'm dangerous in the kitchen?"

 

"I don't make plasma in other peoples' microwaves...and the plutonium and custard tarts were separate."

 

"I made the custard tarts," said Fran, now used to these occasional moments when the professor/student dynamic between Kate and Rosie resurfaced.  She had been around the extended Lethbridge-Stewart ‘family’ long enough now that she also recognised Freddie's name as being a clue that the microwave explosions pre-dated UNIT.  Nevertheless, she did make a mental note to check where the nearest microwaves to Rosie's labs were and to make sure the relevant fire wardens knew about the Senior Biologist's explosive past.  "And they're double wrapped in cling film and greaseproof paper and inside a tin." She wasn’t sure when they were going to be eaten, but hadn’t wanted to take any chances with the dust - it might look a bit like paprika but it wasn’t going to improve the taste of the custard tarts.  As well as being firmly wrapped, they were also already inside Maria Walsh's rucksack before Mike and Millie arrived with the plutonium, so there was no risk of cross-contamination, though Fran wasn't sure if the pastries or the radioactive isotope were considered the more lethal by the Field  Containment Team. It probably depended on your perspective, especially as…”Will Tronkie want to eat the custard tarts?”

 

“Unlikely - he doesn’t like cold custard.  Why?” Kate couldn’t understand why cold custard was so offensive to him - compared to some of the things, alien and Earth in origin, that he cited as his favourite edible delicacies, cold custard did seem rather tame.

 

“Nutmeg.  Dusted on the top.”

 

“I’ll ring Maria, she should still be in range,” said Osgood promptly, stepping out into the corridor to make the phone call.  Nutmeg was, for some reason not fully understood, the only documented human edible that Roqurting physiology couldn’t handle. There were many things on Earth that Tronkie didn’t care to eat, but it was only nutmeg that he genuinely couldn’t eat.

 

“Everything ok Tabby?  You look lost…” Kate then realised that, had she still been in the room and in prodding range, Os would have probably prodded her for that rather blunt statement.

 

“Umm…”  Tabby wasn’t really sure which bit of the rather fractured conversations in the last few minutes had left her the most lost, but she wasn’t going to argue with her boss about technicalities.  “Where is Maria Walsh having tea with Tronkie and why is she taking plutonium and custard tarts with her?” Tabby was fairly certain that UNIT had several easily explained reasons for nipping about town with radioactive materials, but  she was struggling to work out how it might combine with tea and a pastry.

 

“Mars, birthday present and the Doctor’s favourites, which Bergamoe wanted to try.”  Bergamoe was the Yurtapi Ambassador to Earth, who visually resembled a Womble and had a very sweet tooth and a love of vivid colours.

 

“The Plutonium’s a birthday present?” asked Rosie, knowing Tronkie had been going to Mars for the now apparently annual birthday party he hosted for Curiosity, and to which the Doctor and Bergamoe were invited.  “And how Her Excellency doesn’t have diabetes I do not know…” Rosie had met Bergamoe for the first time last week, and still wasn’t sure if the Ambassador’s preference to make her cup of tea by pouring the tea into the full sugarbowl, rather than the more Earth-traditional ‘two lumps please’ approach that Tronkie and Drinkie favoured, was unique to Bergamoe or universal to all Yurtapi. 

 

“Well, power source for Curiosity - the original one NASA sent up there is almost dead.”  Kate rubbed the back of her neck absently, smiling as she worked out what must have prompted Rosie’s comment.  “...and in human terms she’s got two pancreases. Just be glad she wasn’t offering coffee.” That, Kate had discovered the hard way, all Yurtapi made by stirring espresso into treacle until they had a liquid with a similar viscosity to freshly made, unset jam.

 

“Won’t they notice?” asked Tabby,thinking that it was one thing for NASA to fail to notice that the Mars Rover had an annual birthday party thrown for it by its alien friends, but a brand new battery extending its lifespan sounded a bit more obvious.  The expression on Kate’s face made her quickly change the subject, not realising that Kate hadn’t realised she’d been talking about NASA and not the Yurtapi. “So this is your Mars Bar cake Rosie?”

 

“I’ve experimented with muffins this time…but why are we doing it now?”  She’d been happy to make the cake when Kate had mentioned it in passing last week, but she’d not understood why this year they were ‘celebrating’ Curiosity’s birthday at the end of September when last year (confirmed by a quick check on the internet) they’d planned to have the cake at the beginning of August, when Curiosity had landed on Mars.

 

“That’s a question for Os,” said Kate, thanking Fran for the cup of tea she’d just been given.  “But it’s something to do with orbits.”

 

It was statements like that, thought Fran as she sat put a cup of tea down by Osgood’s meeting papers, that made it easy for people to be surprised when they were told that Kate Stewart was also Chief Scientific Officer.  Then again, as Chief Scientific Officer, Kate really didn’t have any scientific points to prove, so it made sense to Fran that, if Kate didn’t know something she didn’t try and pretend that she knew more than she actually did.  

 

“What’s something to do with orbits?” asked Osgood, hearing the end of her girlfriend’s question and knowing that ‘things to do with orbits’ was one of Kate’s relative scientific blindspots, though privately Osgood wasn’t entirely sure why.

 

“Why we’re having Mars Bar muffins today and not last month.”

 

“It’s rotations not orbits, but yes.”  Osgood put her phone in her trouser pocket and continued round to the chair that her stuff was nearest too.  “And Maria had already warned Tronkie that custard tarts usually had nutmeg in them.”

 

“Oh, this is the 37 minutes thing?”  Kate saw Osgood’s nod and continued, giving Osgood the opportunity to investigate the tin of muffins, her apple forgotten.  “According to the Universal Planetary Chronology Treaty which we’re not subject to but Curiosity now is, because Curiosity is native to Earth their birth anniversary is calculated on a non-Earth planet by counting 365.256 rotations of that planet.  From our perspective here on Earth, that number of rotations of Mars takes about 374 days, plus one extra in a leap year to deal with the part rotation, same as on Earth.”

 

“So we celebrated it wrong last year?” Tabby vaguely remembered from school science lessons that the Mars orbit was almost twice as long as the Earth’s solar orbit, but beyond that she’d never really thought about how arbitrary a human ‘year’ was in terms of a time period.  But after just over a year of working at UNIT she’d learned to be neither surprised at how inconsistent time measurement was, nor at what Space Law considered to be worth writing a treaty for. “And why is only Curiosity subject to that Treaty?” 

 

“Technically no.”  Muffin selected, Osgood took up the explanation as she passed the tin to Kate, knowing that once again her girlfriend had missed lunch.  Fortunately there were enough for them to all have two should they want to, which with Osgood’s apple would be better than nothing. “Because Curiosity had only just become an honorary Yurtapi, but going forwards it would be wrong if we stuck to Earth-centric chronology.  The usual approach apparently is to have a recalibration anniversary in your first orbital cycle after interplanetary relocation, which for Curiosity is September 30th.” Osgood put her muffin down on a piece of scrap paper in lieu of a plate. “And Curiosity is the only Earth born honorary alien official off-planet permanent resident currently.”  Osgood didn’t think there were any Earth born honorary aliens unofficially resident off-planet currently but it was impossible to know given their unofficialness...

 

“Like I said…” mumbled Kate around a mouthful of muffin, distracting her girlfriend from her inner speculation. “...it was something to do with orbits!”

  
  



End file.
